


Familiarity breeds contempt

by Ptolemia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (murder is bad kids! dont do that), Fluff, Humour, M/M, Post-Canon, edges around angst i guess but not reALLY, kinda??, rated T for hux being a Naughty Little Man who murders people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6596431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptolemia/pseuds/Ptolemia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of The Force Awakens, Kylo wakes up aboard what might loosely be termed a shuttle. On the positive side, he's awake, he's alive, and he's on his way to Snoke to complete his training. On the negative side, he's stuck in a three meter square escape pod with only Hux for company - and it's going to take them a month to reach their destination.</p>
<p>So, during the course of that journey, Kylo wrestles with a whole host of complex inner conflicts, Hux wrestles with the 'fresher door, and, stuck in close quarters, they both find out that the old adage about familiarity breeding contempt might actually not be entirely true...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Familiarity breeds contempt

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this is self-indulgent, and stupidly contrived, and probably ridiculously ooc, but you know what? I had fun.

Day 1

Kylo wakes in the dark, searing pain darting through him – up behind his eyes, down his side, across his chest. He’s lost, for a moment, disoriented and alarmed and adrift; hands trembling, breath short. His eyes flicker open but the dark remains – vague shapes in the half light, drifting and swaying without forming figures or shapes or anything he might recognise as _real_. He feels the dark like pressure on his chest and he can hear some distant part of him screaming _up, up, UP_. Like there’s something coming. Danger nearby. He can smell it, he thinks. Sharp iron on the snow and the taste of light and ozone blue. The scent of pines. Blood. Only the snow isn’t here- or he isn’t were the snow is, not anymore or- or- but he can’t get his mind straight to think, about the snow or the girl or Hux, strangely, although why he’d… either way. Legs, first. Trembling as he pulls them up under him, and his hands don’t seem to want to balance right and there’s a stretch along his side which feels… cold. Not good.  He glowers, hands scrabbling against the wall for purchase, drawing himself up more with the Force than with his muscles - tries to stand, but as soon as he starts to move he jolts his side and the pain hits, sharp and sudden and full of spite. He feels his body shudder and his legs give way, and he goes tumbling back onto the floor with an undignified yelp.

 

“Oh for fuck's sake,” mutters a familiar voice, “Shut up, will you? Just looking at you gives me headache, I don't need screeching and flailing on top of that, thank you very much.”

“… Hux?” mutters Kylo, dazed. He’s breathless from the fall, totally spent – probably couldn’t make it up off the floor if he tried. Hux doesn’t move any closer though, and he doesn’t seem to be aggressive. Well. Only verbally.

“The one and only,” says Hux, and then - “Well, apart from my father. And my mother. And my brother. And my other brother. And the twins. And great-uncle Hux, if he's not dead yet.” He laughs, and it sounds brittler than usual, bordering on hysteria but not quite crossing the line just yet. Then comes a weary sigh, and a tiny flare of light in the dark. There's something strangely comforting about the dim sight of Hux's face briefly illuminated by a lighter and then, after a second, the tip of a lit cigarette. Comforting isn't usually a word Kylo would use to describe Hux, but somehow it feels better to be here with somebody, at least, even if that somebody happens to be Hux, and even if Hux is grinning manically and looks just a fraction unfocused somewhere behind the eyes, like a wire's loose somewhere in his head.

 

“Where are we?” Kylo manages to slur out, breathing still laboured from the throbbing pain in his side.

Hux laughs, sharp and high, eyes wild. “The ass-end of fucking who the fuck knows, Ren. Thanks to you.”

“Wha-”

Hux turns on him, lips coiling into a sneer. “We're dead, Ren, that's what we are. Fucking. Dead. Soon as we get to Snoke. Or I am, anyway. Maybe you'll get out of it. Maybe you will. Ha. Fucking...” he reaches out behind him and grabs a bottle, which he unscrews unsteadily. “Fucking _fuck_ ,” he says, with feeling. He takes a swig from the bottle. And another. “Years of Academy training, Ren. Wasted. _Wasted_. You hear that? I coulda…” he hiccups, “Been somebody.” He frowns, glaring at the bottle as though it is personally responsible for his life’s woes. “Did I steal that? Think I stole that. Oh well. Doesn’t matter now, I suppose.” He sighs, deeply, then puts the bottle down and takes another drag on his cigarette. He seems pacified, slightly.

 

“But where-” begins Kylo, and then a dart of pain shoots through his side again and he hisses, curling in on himself. He's vaguely aware of Hux prodding him with his boot and snapping at him that he'd better not die.

“I mean it,” says Hux, “It's going to be bad enough stuck with you in here _alive_. I don't think I could bear the stench of a corpse.”

“Thought you wanted to see me dead.”

“I do, just... at a distance.”

“You're squeamish,” mutters Kylo.

 

Hux grips his shoulder, painfully tight, and blows smoke into his face with a furious hiss. “Yes, actually, I am. And you know what? I still hauled your miserable bleeding body into this horrible little shuttle, and bandaged you up, and didn't fucking strangle you when you started talking which, believe me, is a battle I fight on a daily fucking basis, so a little gratitude would be-”

“Alright,” mumbles Kylo, too tired and hurt and dazed and _lost_ to care much about anything other than being left to lick his wounds in peace, “Alright, thanks.”

“What?” says Hux.

“Thank you.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I said thank you,” says Kylo, “Or, uh... sorry?”

Hux takes another swig from the bottle. “You really are injured. Fuck.”

“You keep saying that.”

“What?”

“Fuck.”

“Well,” says Hux, primly, “it's applicable. You want the run-down? How much do you remember?”

“The girl,” mumbles Kylo, “With the lightsaber... she... it's impossible...”

“Well, clearly it isn't,” snaps Hux, stubbing out his cigarette with barely contained fury, “Anyway, yes, after you made that performance, and got my entire life's work blown up – which, by the way, thank you, really, that's quite a feat even for you – I dragged you out of the snow and aboard a small escape vessel, and set a course for Snoke, as ordered.”

“Huh,” says Kylo, which is about as much as he can manage just now. He can feel the pain rising up, his vision blacking out even as he tries to focus on Hux.

“And by small,” says Hux, “I mean this is a one-man shuttle. An escape pod.”

“Ah.”

“And just so you know, this thing isn't even capable of light speed capacity. Let alone anything beyond.”

“Oh.”

“So at our current pace we should reach Snoke in about-” he glances over at the control panel, which is tiny and looks _ancient_ , “Well, about a month.”

“Fuck,”says Kylo because, for once, Hux has it right. It's applicable.

 

The last think Kylo sees before he blacks out again is Hux grinning wildly, raising the bottle to his lips and cackling, “Welcome to hell, Ren. Welcome to hell!”

 

Day 3

He comes round intermittently, drifting in and out of strange dreams and half-recalled snatches of memory so that he's not quite sure sometimes where his thoughts end and reality begins. For a while he hears his mother singing, voices in the kitchen downstairs, distant but familiar. His father's voice, loud above the rest, and the others laughing, and the distant chatter of rain on the edging of the roof.  He smiles, and goes to pull the comforter back over himself – only then he remembers there isn’t any comforter, and this isn't his bed anyway, or his family, and that this is just leftover dregs of a dead boy's life. Ben Solo, or whatever's left of him, dreaming in the dark about dead things.

 

Kylo Ren jolts awake, also in the dark, and tug's Hux's coat over himself. Hux, who's asleep or possibly just blackout drunk, doesn't seem to notice. 

 

****

 

When he wakes up again the coat is back on the other side of the room, draped over Hux, who is staring out of the window into the void. The starlight doesn't seem to make it into the room, and Kylo rolls over again, face aching, side burning, and drifts back into uneasy sleep.

 

Day 4

Next time he comes round he's feverish, burning up in dim half-light again, vaguely aware of a cool hand on his forehead. Probably a dream. He hopes it's a dream, or he _thinks_ he hopes it's a dream, at least, which is sort of the same thing.

“Shut the fuck up,” mutters Hux, as gently as he seems to be capable of, “And please don't...” he sighs. “Just. Just try not to die.”

Kylo groans.

“What part of 'shut the fuck up' did you not get?” snaps Hux.

 

Day 6

The fever doesn't break, but Kylo dips in and out of being able to communicate with some degree of intelligibility.

“Am I dead?” he says, after one particularly painful twinge from the wound in his side.

Hux pauses bandaging it, lip curling. “You will be if you don't hold still while I do this.”

“Hell,” muses Kylo, thinking about Hux and his laughing face in the dark. “Huh. It could be worse.”

Hux snorts. “Well, maybe you're in heaven, then. A thee-by-three one man shuttle with one bed, one chair, terrible food - and only two dreadful books and _me_ for company.”

“No,” says Kylo, trying to keep his tone steady as the meds kick in and the room begins to float away, “because if this was heaven, you'd be wearing less.”

He dimly hears an astonished, “What the _fuck_ , Ren?” before everything fades back to black.

 

Day 7

He _really_ hopes that last memory was a dream.

 

Day 8

The fever breaks. There’s no slow slide into consciousness, no steady recovery – Kylo just wakes up, and it’s gone. He lies there for a moment, gazing up at the low ceiling, all harsh flat lines and bolts and durasteel. He feels drained, still, like the fever took the fire from him, but it’s gone. Definitely gone. He moves his legs a little, experimentally, and twitches his hand along his bandaged side. The pain is still there, but duller, somehow.

 

Sitting up proves to be a monumental task, which is concerning, and by the time he’s managed to lever himself roughly upright he’s sweating again, breath coming in uneven gasps. He lets himself slump against the wall and closes his eyes. Whatever damage his injuries have done, the effects seem to have extended beyond the obvious physical impacts. He feels… drained, yes, that’s the word. Drained. His connection with the Force, normally as simple as breathing feels stretched, somehow, like he’s been drinking from a cup which is running empty. Odd. And, hopefully, temporary. In the meantime…

 

He glances over at Hux, who is curled up in an armchair on the far side of the room, squinting down at a book. His greatcoat is tucked over his knees like a blanket. He appears to have undone the top button of his shirt. The whole picture is bizarre, and Kylo wonders for a moment if this is another strange dream – why would there be an armchair in an escape pod? Hux turns a page, stiffly. He’s clearly aware that Kylo has woken up, but is busily ignoring the fact. He’s also sitting so tensely that Kylo suspects that he might just be pretending to be relaxed – he looks like somebody who once saw a holovid of somebody taking a break and calming down, and is now trying to imitate it through sheer force of will. It’s not working. His hair looks nice slightly unkempt, though.

“Hux,” says Kylo, mostly to distract himself from… wherever that line of thought was going.

“Oh,” says Hux, with a concentrated show of disinterest, “You’re awake.”

“… yes.”

 

Hux doesn’t respond to that; he just purses his lips and takes a sip of caf from the cup perched on the arm of the chair. The cup has _roses_ on it. So does the chair, for that matter.

“This shuttle,” says Kylo.

Hux slowly turns a page of his book before glancing up. “Use your words, please, Ren,” he says, voice dripping with disdain, “I can't give you answers if you don't finish your sentences.”

“It's non-standard.”

“That's not a question.”

“Why do you have an armchair?”

“Why not?”

“I thought all the shuttles were standard issue,” mutters Kylo, struggling slightly to catch his breath halfway through the sentence, side aching furiously under the bandages, “The chairs are... greyish. Metal.”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“But why-”

“Perks of having family in the business,” says Hux, turning back to his book. “This chair was my father's.”

“He gave it to you?”

“No,” says Hux, with a smug little smile and a glint in his eye, “I stole it.”

Kylo almost laughs at that, but his side twinges at the mere thought so instead he just nods, curtly, and says, “Admirable.”

“Quite the opposite,” says Hux, but he's still grinning when he turns back to his book.

 

“How do you steal an armchair?” Asks Kylo, presently, when the ache in his side has dulled a little.

Hux snorts. “That's a stupid question. I took it.”

“I mean, did you carry it yourself? It looks heavy.”

“It is.”

“Then how-”

“It's a long story.”

“Well,” says Kylo, with a mirthless little snort of laughter, “We've got a while.”

Hux glares at him with that particular brand of loathing that makes Kylo's skin crawl with mutual...disgust. Probably. Mostly disgust, with a little bit of something else he'd rather not think too hard about. Either way, Hux glares, and says, “Just because we're stuck in the same room doesn't mean I want to talk to you, Ren. Don't flatter yourself.”

“Yeah, well... I don't want to talk to you.”

“Good.”

“Good,” says Kylo and then he scowls; “An armchair's a stupid thing to steal, anyway.”

 

Day 12

Interaction remains terse over the next several days – or, at least, what Kylo assumes to be days. The shuttle’s day/night cycle appears to be broken, or perhaps it’s merely very outdated. Either way, it seems to be cycling about an hour faster than standard on some cycles, and then an hour slower on others, which is disconcerting to say the least. It also, on occasion, gets stuck on the night phase for far longer than it should – although Kylo can’t quite shake the feeling that Hux might be messing with it on purpose, just to wind him up. It’s certainly possible – the man is in an even fouler mood than usual, if that were conceivable, ever since he lost the argument about who got the bed. Well, it hadn’t been much of an argument - more like a long, very boring lecture from Hux about the time-sharing arrangement he’d plotted out (complete with several charts, a graph, and three different equations he went to great length to explain) which allowed ‘optimal rest allowance for both parties, taking into account the ship’s sleep/wake cycle and optimal timings for REM sleep’. Kylo pretended to listen for half an hour or so, then rolled over, said ‘No,’ and force-choked Hux when he tried to object. This had made relations tense. More tense than usual, in any case. Kylo enjoys the silence, for a while, but he finds himself missing conversation, strangely enough.

 

Maybe force-choking people doesn’t solve everything, he muses.

 

He attempts to engage Hux in some sort of dialogue several times, but Hux appears to be entirely resistant to even the possibility of a conversation, and Kylo has no patience for drawing him out, so silence resumes. Kylo spends a lot of time looking out of the window, watching the stars fall past. Hux alternates between reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) the two books that were left in the shuttle, and lying stiffly on the ground with his coat pulled over him, making a very pointed show of how uncomfortable the floor is.

 

Eventually Kylo gets sick of the whole rigmarole, and snaps out a terse, “We could share. I shouldn’t have- I wouldn’t mind.

Hux looks at him like he’s gone mad. It’s possible that this is not inaccurate. “Pardon?”

“The bed. If it’s so much trouble we could-” he feels himself flush, illogically. “Forget it,” he grunts, “I was only… Just. Forget I said that.”

“I intend to,” says Hux, visibly affronted at the suggestion.

 

And that is their only interaction for the next two night-cycles.

 

Day 14

Things come to a head when the door to the ‘fresher – which is hideous, hardly even a room, just a tiny cubicle with a rudimentary shower and a toilet facility – breaks down. Normally a door breaking wouldn’t pose much of an issue, but this particular door is a stupidly complex piece of tech, and therefore when it breaks, it breaks in a spectacular fashion. Sparks actually fly. There’s a smell of burning circuitry, and a horrible metallic screech, and a gentle hiss of steam, and then the little door-display panel clicks to ‘closed’ very briefly before shorting out with a pop and the sound of shattering transparisteel.

 

Kylo looks up from his perch on the floor, where he’s been trying to meditate for the past few hours (emphasis on the word _trying_ , because his side is healing very slowly, and still twinges unpleasantly now and then) and Hux pauses with his cup of caf halfway to his lips and swears, very quietly.

 

“That looks bad,” says Kylo, after a moment.

“Bad?” splutters Hux, scurrying over to the door and observing the blown-out panel with a look of growing despair. “ _Bad?!_ This is awful.”

Kylo shrugs. “Could be worse. One of us could be stuck in there.”

“At least I’d be in a different room to you,” sniffs Hux. “And now we’re both…” he trails off, inspecting the wiring with an expression of deep concern. “Not good. Looks like the whole thing’s just… I wonder if it could be forced open…”

Kylo grunts, and heads over to stand next to Hux. They both stare at the door for a moment. “Maybe,” he says, “But it looks like the circuit has... uh… fused to the back of the panel?”

“Can’t you do the…” Hux waves a hand vaguely. “The thing.”

“What?”

“With your powers. However it works.”

“No.”

“Ren, listen, that door needs to be working and I am _commanding_ that you-”

“No.”

“Ren-”

“It’s not a matter of brute force. If I wrench it open I might damage the shuttle itself.”

“And?”

“Dying would be a considerably larger inconvenience than the ‘fresher door being broken, Hux.”

“That’s what you think,” mutters Hux, darkly. “I’m going to inspect the circuit. There’s a tool kit on board somewhere, I should be able to…” he wanders over to the other side of the shuttle, muttering mutinously to himself.

 

Kylo observes his progress around the room, and lets him rifle through several cabinets before clearing his throat and saying, “It’s in the ‘fresher.”

Hux freezes, and turns to face Kylo very, very slowly. “What is?”

“The toolkit.”

Hux takes five deep breaths. “Right. And why is that?”

“I wanted to improve the shower pressure.”

“Right.”

“I had a power shower back on the Finalizer.”

“I see.”

“My hair was suffering.”

Hux purses his lips. “Ren.”

“Yes?”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

 

****

 

“There’s a bucket over here, at least,” says Kylo, after a few hours of stormy silence.

Hux turns around from where he’s currently sat, angrily staring at the corner of the room furthest away from Kylo. “What are you suggesting?”

“Well, with the ‘fresher offline-”

“No,” says Hux, flatly.

“Do you have a better plan?”

Hux glares.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

 

****

 

Eventually, Kylo comes to sit by the ‘fresher door with a sense of vague resignation, and peers at the panel.

Hux pauses in his increasingly desperate attempts to detangle a series of broken wires with…

“A fork?” says Kylo, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I don’t have access to a toolkit, because _somebody_ -”

Kylo pries the fork carefully from Hux’s hand. “You’ll electrocute yourself. Let me.”

“You’re not an engineer.”

“No. But I know a few things about fixing rusty old ships.”

“I’m a highly qualified engineer, Ren – if I can’t fix it then I highly doubt that an entirely untrained-”

“You’re wrong.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

“Ren-”

“I’m familiar with this type of door mechanism. Might be able to do something for it.”

“Oh _really_?”

“Mmm.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t expect anything, Hux,” mutters Kylo, feeling his voice tremor slightly, anger welling up beneath the surface. His palm shakes.

Hux, clearly noticing the change in the atmosphere and unwilling to really rile Kylo up in such a small space, throws his hands in the air. “Fine! Well, _you_ electrocute yourself, then. I’d enjoy that.”

“Good.”

“I would!” he says, stomping over to the window and glaring out into space as though the universe itself has done him some enormous injury.

 

Kylo rolls his sleeves up, and turns his attention to the broken door.

 

****

 

“Ren.”

“Hux.”

“… try not to actually electrocute yourself.”

“I can’t promise anything,” says Kylo. He doesn’t turn around, but he thinks Hux might actually be smiling.

 

Day 15

The fixing of the door proves to be less complex than Kylo had feared, and Hux seems considerably cheered by the development – which is stupid, really, because it’s not as though their situation has actually improved. It’s just gone back to the same level of awful as it was in the beginning. Kylo points this out, but Hux waves him aside, telling him not to “spoil it, Ren, for the love of-”

“Spoil what?”

Hux shrugs, peering into one of the cabinets and rooting around for something or other, “My good mood.”

“But-”

“Look, if you shut up, I’ll let you have some of the good brandy.”

“I don’t need your permission to drink the good brandy,” says Kylo, sharply.

“Yes you do, it’s mine.”

“I’m a powerful force user who-”

“Yes, yes, of course you are.”

“I can take whatever I want.”

“Not the good brandy, you can’t,” says Hux, cheerfully, waggling a bottle at Kylo with a crooked grin. “I’d fight you for it.”

“You would lose.”

Hux chuckles quietly, and scans the vicinity for a tumbler. Kylo, watching his slightly unsteady progress around the room, can’t help but suspect that he’s already been at what he refers to as the ‘bad brandy’ – although as far as Kylo can see it still looks eye-wateringly expensive.

 

“Well,” says Hux, after a moment, “I can’t think where I put the glasses, so I suppose we’ll have to…” he takes a swig, then proffers the bottle to Kylo. “There. Not even poisoned. You’re welcome.”

“Your generosity overwhelms me,” mutters Kylo, as he takes the bottle. He eyes it suspiciously.

“Go on, it won’t bite.”

Kylo rolls his eyes, takes a big gulp, and-

“Ren!” snaps Hux, snatching the bottle back off him, “This is expensive, don’t- are you spitting it out? That’s atrocious. I’m personally offended.”

Kylo glares, eyes watering, throat raw. “It- I didn’t expect it to be so-”

“Have you honestly never drunk-”

“I’ve had _beer_ ,” mumbles Kylo, sullenly.

Hux pinches the bridge of his nose. “Right, look, have a drink of water, and then come back here and take a _sip_ , you enormous ungainly…” he founders for a moment, “Idiot.”

“Watch yourself,” growls Kylo, but he does as he’s told.

Hux pats his hand. “This is fun, Ren, try to look a little less furious.”

 

Kylo tries. He’s not sure if it works, but he tries.

 

****

 

The room feels like it’s spinning, and looking out of the viewport makes Kylo seasick (starsick?) at this point, but he finds himself laughing, anyway – he can’t even remember what the joke was. Or if there was a joke. Or if-

“Oh, so you _can_ smile,” says Hux, leaning on Kylo’s shoulder for support and swaying slightly.

“So can you,” grumbles Kylo, “Look, there you are, smiling…”

“Well,” mutters Hux, with a glint in his eye, “I won’t tell Snoke if you don’t.”

 

Normally mention of the name terrifies Kylo, because it reminds him of that ever-present pressure behind his eyes, where the dark sits. Only - and this is strange - today the dark doesn’t seem to be there at all. It’s just… gone. Wherever Snoke is, wherever those deep old eyes are watching, wherever that oppressive presence lurks, it isn’t here. Kylo doesn’t remember the last time Snoke wasn’t there. Actually, Kylo doesn’t remember a time like that at all - Ben does.

 

He should be scared of that – more scared than he is of Snoke even, maybe – but the shuttle is warm and the stars are bright and Hux is outright _giggling_ , which is bizarre, and so instead he laughs and shakes his head and says, “No promises, Hux. No promises.”

 

He feels light, like walking on air. Like other things, too – but he tries not to think about the other things.

 

****

 

Then everything goes dizzy and bright – or, dizzier and brighter, anyway, and he’s reaching out to touch Hux’s neck where he can see the bruising. He doesn’t feel bad about having force-choked him, not exactly, only… well. He feels a little bad.

“Here, let me-”

“Ren, what are you-”

He hushes Hux, gently taps a finger along the line of the bruising and reaches _out_ , just softly, with his mind. He catches a brief train of Hux’s thoughts, which are even sloppier than his own and half-nonsensical by this point, but he brushes that aside. He hums, quietly, and feels where the skin and the flesh and the soft delicate veins are and just gently and slowly and ever so carefully lines up where everything should be and- there. Done. Good as new.

Hux raises an astonished hand to his neck. “Did you just-?”

“Broke that. Fixed that. Brought balance to the Force. Darth Vader would be proud.”

 

Then he leans over Hux’s shoulder and vomits.

 

Day 16 

“Do you know,” says Hux, conversationally, as Kylo slumps past him with a groan to go make himself a cup of caf the next morning, “I think that was probably one of the worst drunken mistakes ever made.”

“What, the throwing up?”

“No.”

“Huh. What, then?”

“Being _friendly_ ,” says Hux, wrinkling his nose like the thought personally offends him.

Kylo grunts, too muzzy-headed to do much else.

“It’ll ruin our professional dynamic, you realise.”

“Get on with Phasma alright,” volunteers Kylo.

“And?”

“Work together pretty well.”

“I suppose,” says Hux. He doesn’t sound overly convinced.

 

Kylo is aware of Hux’s eyes on him as he stumbles around looking for a mug, and caf powder, and… whatever else… he was looking for. He stares down at the powder, confused.

“Here, let me,” snaps Hux, clearly exasperated. “Go on, sit down, you’re making me ill just looking at you.”

“… thanks.”

Hux waggles a warning finger at him. “Don’t say that. Down that road, civility lies, and _then_ where would we be?”

Kylo grins, barely visible through the tangled mess of his morning hair; “Your jumper looks nice.”

“Don’t.”

“What a lovely green.”

“Stop it!”

“Matches your eyes.”

“Shut up and drink your caf, Ren.”

 

Kylo takes the proffered mug with a smirk, but says nothing.

 

Day 19 

“You’ve never seen active service,” scoffs Kylo, over another the-brandy’s-here-so-we-might-as-well drinking session, “I refuse to believe that.”

Hux winks, and pours himself another measure. “Not _technically_ , no. But I’ve killed a man.”

“Starkiller doesn’t count.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Doesn’t.”

“Fine. But even discounting my life's greatest achievement – which you blew up-”

“I didn’t-”

Hux waves him into silence. “Yes, yes, whatever you say. No. The point is. Killed a man. With my bare hands. Oh, hmm. And a razor.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“ _No_.”

Hux glares. “Can’t you tell when people are lying? I’m sure I’ve heard you say that. Several times. Often while shouting and carelessly destroying my ship.”

“… yes,” says Kylo, stiffly.

“Well? Am I lying?”

“… no.”

“And do you want to hear the story?”

“I suppose.”

 

Hux beams. “There, not so hard, is it? Now, where was I… oh! Yes. It was back on, uh, Ryloth. Six years ago now. Seven?” He stares at his glass, as though it might hold the answer. “Not sure. Either way, we were supposed to be doing some fairly straightforward recon, only there were more rebels in the area than we’d been made aware of. We got picked up, had to fake some story about being a rebellion delegation that got lost. So we were stuck – about twelve of us, outdated fake IDs, whole phony backstory on the verge of falling apart. You know how it is.”

“Not really, no.”

“Right, well, either way. So, our ship gets confiscated, that’s the other thing. Did I mention that? Well, it does. And the one man on the base who has access to a master key for the ship hangar is, mmm, the rebel leader. He was called... I don’t remember. Captain something or other. And he kept it in his room, which was bio-locked to his voice, and an eyeball-scanner or something of that sort. Fingerprints, maybe - crude, but effective. And remarkably hard to crack.”

“So you killed him and stole the key.”

“Wait! I’m getting to that part.”

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“I- yes, but I did it _cleverly_ , which is the point of this story. You can kill people without storming about and shouting and waving your lightsaber around in a manner which makes it clear that you’re compensating for something-”

“Watch yourself.”

“Oh, be quiet. They’d disarmed us, in any case, so I couldn’t have just gunned them down even if I wanted to. Anyway, so, we were invited to the weekly,” Hux sneers, “ _Dance_ … thing… that they were holding in some mouldy old barn – mostly to keep tabs on us, no doubt. So I, naturally, asked the nice Captain if he wanted to dance, which he did, and then if he wanted to take a quick turn outside, which he did, and then if he wanted to invite me to his room, which he _very_ much did, and then-”

“And then you went to his room and killed him and stole the key?”

“Don’t be silly. I fucked him first.”

 

“You… oh. Right,” says Kylo. He takes another drink a little bit too fast, and ends up spluttering over the carpet again.

“And _then_ I killed him and took the key,” says Hux, with a glimmer in his eye, “And then I went to the hangar and drove the ship straight off planet and never looked back. I hear my squadron were executed by the rebels, afterward, but you know what?”

“What?”

“We were, almost all of us, competing for a job, at the time. Top secret. Engineering work on the Order’s latest superweapon.”

“Starkiller?”

“Hmm. So it was convenient, really. Very convenient.”

 

“Well,” says Kylo, “Well, I... I killed my own father. So. There.”

“Right,” says Hux, “You realise this isn’t a ‘which of us has committed the most depraved murder’ contest, right?”

“Right.”

“But,” he says, leaning over the table toward Kylo with a vaguely unsettling grin, “If it was…”

 

****

 

They end up falling into bed together – in a very literal and fairly uninteresting sense, which happily does not involve anyone getting stabbed with a razor blade – after a drunken argument over how uncomfortable the floor is. The argument ends in what might, possibly, be termed a pillow fight (even drunk, Kylo is really, r _eally_ glad that nobody else is ever going to know about this), and then they toss a coin for it, only they lose the coin in the dark, and eventually they both just tumble onto opposite sides of the bed and fight over the covers until one or both of them finally passes out.

 

Kylo discovers, on waking, that Hux is apparently something of a cuddler. For that matter, Kylo discovers that _Kylo_ is something of a cuddler, which is equally unexpected, in his opinion.

 

They don’t discuss it further, but they carry on sharing, even when the brandy runs out and there’s no plausible deniability in drunkenness.

 

In fairness, the floor is r _eally_ uncomfortable.

 

Day 23

“Ren, what are you having for breakfast?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Well, you don’t have to decide, because I made you rehydrated womprat,” Hux squints at the bowl he’s holding, “Uh, stew? Porridge. No, surely it’s stew. No need to thank me, by the way.”

Ren eyes the bowl with deep scepticism. There are… lumps. “That looks absolutely vile.”

“Yes, well. That’s why I said there’s no need to thank me.”

 

Day 26

"We're running out of conditioner, Ren."

Kylo rolls over, and pulls the pillow over his head. "Nggh."

"It's because you're vain."

"Probably."

"I mean it, we'll run out. And _then_ where will you be?"

"Well, we can't have that many more days left, anyway, can we?"

 

Hux doesn't reply, and when Kylo finally hauls himself out of bed, he seems to have locked himself back in the 'fresher.

 

Day 30

“ETA is T minus…” Hux hums and taps the console, “Twelve hours. Give or take.”

 

Kylo looks up, feeling as though he’s suddenly been knocked out of a strange dream and back into reality. There’s Hux, once more neatly kitted out in his regulation uniform, greatcoat carefully folded and tucked away in one of the cabinets for now. He’s tapping at the console officiously, not looking up, back stiff and eyes narrowed and his hair smoothed down under his stupid little cap. Kylo can almost remember why he hated him in the first place. Almost.

 

He doesn’t say that, though, he just grunts an acknowledgement and goes back to staring out of the viewport.

 

“Kylo-” the word comes out clipped, like Hux got halfway through saying it and then regretted having spoken at all. Kylo can feel it. The regret. But he can also feel a lot of other things, most of them more complicated than he would have assumed Hux to be capable of feeling, prior to this whole shitshow of a journey.

So he says, “Ben, actually. It’s Ben.” Which is a lie, in a lot of important ways, but Hux doesn’t need to know that.

Hux clears his throat. “You probably shouldn’t-”

“Probably not,” agrees Kylo, “Probably not.”

 

Hux hesitates, hovering over the control panel for a moment, then comes over to the viewport and sits down next to Kylo on the floor, almost touching, but not quite. He looks up, and out, and says, “Hello, Ben. I’m Brendol.”

Kylo feels an odd lump in his throat, something welling up that has snickers. “ _Brendol_? Seriously?”

“Listen,” says Hux, stiffly, “It’s an old family name and- stop laughing! Stop it!”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Yes you are! I can see you, you realise that?”

“Can I call you Dolly for short?”

Hux sighs. “This is why I never liked you.”

 

****

 

“Do you ever wonder about that, though?” says Kylo, after a few minutes.

“Hmm? About what?”

“I mean, if it wasn’t for- all this. The First Order. Snoke.”

“What about it?”

“Well do you ever wonder if we might be… I don’t know. Different. Better.”

Hux wrinkles his brow. “No.”

“Really?”

“No, why would I?”

 

****

 

“What about the Light?”

“What? I can’t do anything about the day/night cycle, Ren, I already told you that-”

“No, the Light.”

“What?”

“Not the light. The Light.”

“… what?”

“I’m capitalising the second one.”

“Ren.”

“Yes?”

Hux sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You understand that I can’t hear whether you’re capitalising things or not, yes?”

“Oh. Of course. But do you?”

“Do I what, Ren?”

“Think about it.”

“I’m a soldier, not a philosopher. I don’t subscribe to your bizarre religious ramblings, Ren.”

“I… yes. I see.”

 

****

 

“I’m afraid,” says Kylo, running his thumb along the back of Hux’s palm. At some point they’d ended up holding hands, and neither of them seemed to be especially willing to stop, not just yet, not when there's only a few hours left, anyway, before... well.

“Of Snoke?”

“Mmm. No.”

“You’re a liar, then. Or a coward.”

“Perhaps I should rephrase. Yes, I’m afraid of Snoke, a little. But there are worse things out there.”

“Oh?”

“The Light.”

“That girl, you mean? She did seem… powerful. But untrained. If you allow me to designate a squadron to tail her, I’m sure we can-”

“No. No, not the girl.”

Hux sighs. “This is getting a little abstract, Ren.”

“I could… show you?”

Hux hesitates, then nods, once, sharply. “Yes. Alright.”

 

“This will be easier if you take my other hand as well,” says Kylo.

Hux raises an eyebrow. “Will it?”

“Uh… no. Probably not.”

Hux takes his other hand anyway, turning himself a little so they’re facing one another. “Alright. And then?”

“Close your eyes, you should be able to- uh, I’ll show you…”

 

The vision is a familiar one; Kylo thinks about it more often than he’d like to admit, and not always on purpose. It rises to the forefront of his mind when he dreams - or when he’s meditating, sometimes, much to Snoke’s displeasure. He’s got good at hiding it from Snoke, over the years, but it’s still there, so close right now that it barely takes any effort at all to pluck it forward. He feels Hux’s hands tense as he skims over the surface of the other man’s mind.

“It’s alright,” mutters Kylo.

“I know it is,” snaps Hux, but it sounds a lot fonder in his head than it does out loud.

 

Kylo takes a deep breath, and refocuses on the vision. It looks something like this.

 

_A city. Somewhere in the New Republic. It’s varied, over the years, which city Kylo imagines, and nowadays it’s a strange blend of cities that doesn’t exist anywhere outside of his own head – and now Hux’s too, he supposes. It resembles Coruscant most strongly, perhaps, but the sidewalks are too wide, the high rises too low. There’s one moon, or two, only the sky seems to shift, dreamlike. It isn’t about the city, though. Not the buildings, in any case. Images flicker by – a woman with her hair in long loose plaits down her back, younger than she should be if this is the present, but older than Kylo ever saw her face-to-face. She’s laughing at something, only what it is isn’t clear, and it doesn’t matter, because she has her hand on the arm of a man with a worn-out jacket she keeps telling him he should replace. Only he doesn’t. Wouldn’t. The jacket matters. In the kitchen there are people talking; a clean-shaven man with jedi robes and a twinkle in his eye, and a wookie who’s been wearing the ‘kiss the cook’ apron somebody bought him as a joke for the past two weeks solid. A young man - who in this universe got to grow up, and wear robes like his uncle, and roll his eyes at whatever soppy musical vid dad’s talked mum into watching this time – passes through the kitchen on his way up the stairs, and-_

 

“Is that you?” says Hux, “And was that- was that General Or-”

Kylo’s eyes snap open, momentarily confused, half in this world and half in the other. “I… yes, after a fashion. And. Yes.”

“Hmm.”

Kylo coughs, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”

“No! No, it’s… illuminating. I think. But what on earth is scary about that? It looked rather pleasant.”

Kylo sighs. “Yes, that’s… sort of the problem.”

“Oh?”

“Well, it… maybe I can explain, a little.”

“Yes?”

“Well. There’s a world where we aren’t stuck on this shuttle-”

“Oh, joy of joys.”

“Be quiet, I’m explaining. Anyway. There’s a world where we aren’t us at all – or, no, that’s not right. Where we are us, but differently.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I mean… a world where I’m a jedi, and you’re-”

“An engineer.”

“Alright, yes, you’re still an engineer, but you don’t blow up planets, you just. Uh.”

“Build machines, or something.”

“Yes, exactly, and-”

“What sort of machines?”

“It- Hux, it doesn’t matter what sort of- look, let me show you.”

 

He squeezes Hux’s hand, and Hux smiles, and closes his eyes, and leans forward a little so their foreheads are almost touching and-

 

_The vision looks like this: an office. It’s wide, and spacious, and has a view over a city which looks a lot like nowhere at all. Hux is at the desk, which is neat and orderly but not unusually so. There’s a half-empty mug of caf going cold at the windowsill, but Hux hasn’t noticed. He’s hunched over a series of diagrams – some sort of R2 unit, by the looks of it. Perhaps he’s doing repair work. There’s a knock, and a young man - who looks a lot like Kylo but isn’t quite him - walks in, and smiles, and reaches a hand out to squeeze Hux’s shoulder and tell him to take a break, for once, c’mon, and Hux glances up, and-_

“Glasses?” says Hux, sounding amused. “Has allegiance with the Light damaged my eyesight?”

“Oh, uh, no. I just… thought those looked nice.”

“Of course you did,” mutters Hux, rolling his eyes. “How ridiculous.”

“The glasses?”

“The whole thing, Ren! It’s foolishness – it’s sappy and saccharine and absolutely unfounded in any kind of reality-”

“But-”

“Is that really what preoccupies your mind? You worry about _that_?”

“It’s the possibility it represents which is-” begins Kylo, stiffly.

“It’s nonsense, Ren. It’s absolute idiotic _nonsense_.”

Kylo flinches back, a little, tensing up again and drawing back. “Oh. Well. I… I don’t…”

Hux tries to catch his eye, and shakes his head, and says, “It really is, you know. Awful.”

 

And then he leans in, and kisses the very corner of Kylo’s mouth, and whispers, “But… show me again.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> if u made it thru to the bitter end, i applaud u honestly
> 
> come follow me on tungle dot com (www.moist-von-lipwig.tumblr.com)


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